Tehran: Russian use of Iranian airbases to strike Syria is “over”

The Russian military said on Monday its aircraft operating from an Iranian air base to conduct strikes in Syria had completed their tasks, but left open the possibility of using the Hamadan base again if circumstances warranted, reported Reuters.

“Russian military aircraft that took part in the operation of conducting air strikes from Iran’s Hamadan air base on terrorist targets in Syria have successfully completed all tasks,” a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Major-General Igor Konashenkov, said in a statement.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the cooperation between Russia and Iran reached a new level a week ago, when Russia announced it was using the air base in western Iran “Hamadan” for launching attacks in Syria in support of the Assad regime.

The Russian use of the Iranian Hamdan air base is the first of its kind since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, as Iran has never allowed any foreign power to use its military bases before.

Some Iranian lawmakers, including parliament speaker Ali Larijani, had denied the claims and called the move a breach of Iran’s constitution which forbids “the establishment of any kind of foreign military base in Iran, even for peaceful purposes” .

though the Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan rejected the internal criticism, yet he chided Moscow for publicizing the move, describing it as showing off and a “betrayal of trust.”

“We have not given any military base to the Russians and they are not here to stay,” Dehghan was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency late on Sunday.

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